CHICAGO – The Indiana Pacers know who they’re playing Wednesday night. They know who they’re chasing and fighting, too, in these dwindling days of the NBA regular season and prelude to what matters most.

One team is the Miami Heat. The other is the one staring back at them from the mirror.

The former, they don’t much like. The latter, they barely know. Who are those guys?

“We’ve just been dead, it seems like, on the court lately,” Paul George said after the Pacers’ 89-77 loss to the Chicago Bulls Monday. “That’s not us. That’s not us. We used to be a team that played with a lot of energy and just had fun out there, and I think we kind of lost that along the way.”

The Pacers, once the sweethearts of the Eastern Conference, aren’t even the darlings of their own dressing room anymore. They’re 5-7 since March 4, flailing about offensively and mired in a funk that center Roy Hibbert admitted late in the evening at United Center has become a “big-time concern.”

Never mind the getting part, the Pacers are there. They’ll be facing their nemeses from Miami Wednesday at Bankers Life Fieldhouse (8 p.m. ET, ESPN) at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t even matter that the two-time defending champs are off their own rails with a 5-7 mark over their last 12 games, too. The Heat, in claiming rings the past two postseasons, earned the right to dither around a little with this regular season, setting themselves up however they chose or, at this point, can for a third title run.

The Pacers are fortunate they haven’t already been passed, which would make this funk worse. The Heat? They probably have to take this chase-down seriously, even if they hadn’t wanted to.

Pinning down the start of the Pacers’ problems is tricky. The last 12 games are the ones in which they’ve been under water. They were 9-3 in the stretch that preceded it, still a step down from their early pace, with signs of offensive discombobulation creeping in. Troubles showed up in a late January road trip, in which the Pacers went 2-2 with blowout losses to the Sunsand Nuggets.

The what is more apparent than the when: George talked some about “hero ball,” the temptation for players — as the cliché goes, one offered by a reporter anyway — to try to do too much when things go awry.

Typically, that makes them merely go more awry. No, in the Pacers’ case, the what is their offense

“All the rah-rah [junk] we always talked about before, I wish we would do that,” Hibbert said. “I don’t know, we do it one in probably six games sometimes. It just seems like some days we’re not hitting shots. Some days we’re not sharing the ball. And it affects our defense when we can’t score. … Whatever we’re doing offensively just isn’t working on a consistent basis.”

So while there might be some big-picture issues in play, the immediate concern is Indiana’s struggles to put up points and coach Frank Vogel‘s challenge to make that happen.

“I mean, I think we’ve had a difficulty handling the success,” Hibbert said. “We’ve just got to learn — I’ve been taught, we’ve been saying this for a while — to be able to play for each other like we used to. And set people up for easy shots. Everything we take is, very tough contested shots.

“I just look at other teams we play and they just swing, swing, swing the ball until somebody gets an open shot or a wide-open layup. Sometimes you think, how can we get those type of shots where we don’t have to heave something up at the end of the shot clock? That type of stuff, people can’t get into a rhythm. It’s just a lot of 1-on-1 basketball.”

The offensive frustrations and losing, though, haven’t leaked into team character or chemistry.

“No, I mean, we’re great off the court. Family atmosphere,” Hibbert said. “On the court, it just seems like we’re just not clicking. And we should be clicking now toward the end of the season.”

Also, someone had to ask: Did the Pacers get too clever or too ambitious by half in changing up their roster — bringing in Evan Turner, Lavoy Allen and Andrew Bynum, trading away Danny Granger and shedding Orlando Johnson — so deep into what had been a rewarding season?

“I’m not gonna…,” Hibbert said, sounding as if he was editing himself. “I mean, Larry [Bird, Pacers president] is the man in charge. He made the decision that he felt this is the best group to go out there and compete on the floor. So we have to go out there and figure it out.”

And now it’s Miami, which is like a visit from the in-laws the same evening you just squabbled over the credit card bill. The game Wednesday might not mean all that much, but it’s unlikely to offer a fix. And it could fester into something worse.

“If we don’t figure this thing out and, if we do get to the point this summer and face those guys again… we have to figure this out now,” Hibbert said. “Because they’re such a good team, they’re going to sniff that out. The way we’ve been playing, it’s just, that point where we got to last year isn’t guaranteed.”

16 Comments

I was a huge Pacer fan. I loved the team attitude and how it was all for one and one for all. Then they trade away Granger and I lost all faith and to be honest still extremely disappointed in Larry bird and I lost all kinds of respect for him because of that one trade. I said to everyone that it was a terrible mistake. Yes they brought in better players but what the team was feeling and how they felt towards everyone was going to change and cause them to suffer tremendously. Everyone said back to me that it was just business and it needed to be done to win it all. I know that danny and o.j were still on that team that the offensewould be stumbling a bit but the team as a whole would fight for each other and grind out wins and then hit stride in the playoffs and roll to the finals. Now this team doesn’t have the same identity and have to figure one out. Sorry but i lost faith in them and gave up cheering for them. That trade that was supposed to be a home run was nothing more than a pop up waiting the caught in foul territory

Worst mistake was trading Danny Granger. He looked too be coming around finally physically then they trade him. Danny Granger may have struggled after injury but he played a huge part team chemistry wise. Larry Bird and his Pacers honestly deserve to plummet this season for dealing away their franchise player in the middle of a historic season. If something aint broke, don’t fix it

The Pacers are one of the many examples of why the NBA season’s 82 game schedule does more harm than good. The Pacers are resting for the playoffs. They don’t really care about games 62-70.They won’t be the last teams to stiff games late in the season. Silver, like Stern wants to ignore these facts since 62 games is plenty enough. 82 is just for the owners’ pocketbooks, not the player’s health or longevity.

Yeaaah,right….Pacers beating Miami seems legit. Heat has a deep bench,veterans and experience.Pacers are showing their true face.I still believe in rematch of 2012 Finals between Miami and OKC,only this time,Thunder will win it.

Indiana has pay their dues. Like the Jordan Bulls, the Bad Boys, or Riley Knicks, etc. had to do. It, also, looks like they lost their defensive identity. Maybe, they are a little banged up, but they are not crushing people on the defensive end like they were earlier in the season. Noah is in Hibbert’s head and is giving other team’s the blueprint for breaking him down.
Indiana …… should……. make it to the Eastern Conference Finals, but they better step it up on the defensive end.

The Heat is easier for them to beat on Wednesday. Indiana is much better than the Heat this season and the Heat themselves are in a worse funk. IND can out-rebound them easy and get more field-goal attempts as a result. Plus the Heat lost their defense so IND’s offense won’t struggle as it did against a good defensive team like the Bulls.